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1626 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles / Orange Counties Building and Construction Los Angeles, CA 90026-784 Trades Council Phone (213) 483-4222 RON MILLER Affiliated with the Building & Construction Trades Dept., AFL-CIO July 26, 2021 Santa Ana City Council 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92701 City Council Members, Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades represent more than 140,000 hard working men and women covering 14 Trades and 49 Labor Organizations. Within the jurisdiction of Building Trades Council, we have approximately 26 apprenticeship training centers that operate day in and day out preparing the future construction workforce in the area. Our request to continue to urge the City Council to strengthen the Labor component of the Housing Opportunity Ordinance, still stands from when it was amended last year. We recognize the importance of incentivizing residential construction but it must address wages, benefits and apprenticeship training as well. The current Ordinance has verbiage that is only aspirational in nature and given the lack of training offered by the housing sector and the income disparities that exist not only in Santa Ana but across the Nation, we feel that the labor language should be more of a requirement and enforceable. Instead of stating that the application of a Skilled and Trained Workforce be aspirational we believe that it should be made a requirement. The State Public Contract Code section 2603 should also be added to the referenced Code in the Ordinance. Furthermore, the Ordinance should reference proof that there is a good faith effort mechanism to do true local/veteran hire. In the State and across the Nation, construction is a separated into two subsectors with strikingly different working conditions: one is a high wage and generally unionized nonresidential construction sector. The other subsector is a low-wage, often exploitative residential construction sector. This has resulted in less training being offered to workers while increasing unsafe working conditions. Construction has the third highest occupational fatality rate of all industrial sectors. practices, applying worker misclassification and cash payments made under the table, earning just 52 cents for every dollar earned by workers with employee status. It is estimated that 19% of California Latino construction workers that were independent contractors were misclassified and only make about 70 cents on the dollar as white workers with the same skills. They are significantly more likely to be uninsured and ironically, struggling with housing costs. A study showed that 70% or more workers in the LA residential construction sector experienced non- payment of overtime and wage theft. Њ